


bad dog(ma)

by seraf



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Brainwashing, Character Death Fix, Episode: S06e04 Orders, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Good soldiers follow orders, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Misunderstandings, Panic Attacks, Post-Episode: s04e10 Carnage of Krell, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-Umbara, Self-Harm, bad batch? post bad batch, fives just isn't paid enough for this, i just cant fucking write happy things, it will be eventually i swear
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-25
Updated: 2018-01-25
Packaged: 2019-03-09 05:42:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13474869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seraf/pseuds/seraf
Summary: so sometimes your friend makes a nice fix-it au, and your immediate response is just 'yeah, but what if it was a little bit more painful?'fives, echo, and dogma live together, hidden from the war and their fates. they all got out. the war is gone from them - no more duty, or orders, or conspiracies too big to grasp.well.mostly.





	bad dog(ma)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [letitrainathousandflames](https://archiveofourown.org/users/letitrainathousandflames/gifts).



he’s rummaging through the kitchen cabinets _again,_ looking for the med-pac, frown creasing the lines in his forehead ( and, all told, probably not helping his headache any, either. ) this is becoming an almost daily occurence, and he’s starting to worry about what happens when they run out of painkillers. maybe that’s why they’re missing? he pushed aside a few scattered items on the counter and breathed a sigh of relief - they were underneath his blacks. must have been where he left them last time. he’s carefully tipping two capsules into his palm when echo comes in with a basket full of the meliooruns from the trees outside.

 

‘ again, vod’ika? you ended up taking four or so yesterday. are we sure you aren’t coming down with something? ‘

 

dogma shrugs, turning on the sink and sticking his head underneath the faucet, swallowing both pills. ‘ not according to the med-guide i’m not. or - at least, i don’t have a virus, parasite, or bacterial infection. maybe there’s something that exists outside of that, but it’s just … headaches. ‘

 

echo sat the meliooruns down and held his ( flesh ) hand to dogma’s forehead, eyes narrowed, like he was checkingfor a fever, and dogma couldn’t help but smile. ‘ and you’ve been drinking enough water? sleeping regularly? ‘ dogma shrugged.

 

‘ as much as i’m able to. ‘it’s not a lie, and echo nods, his face still undeniably _troubled._

 

–––––––––––––––

 

_goodsoldiers follow ordersgoo dsoldiers fo lll l o w odrers god good soldier solderi soldiers folfollow orders good soldiers f fgood soldigood orders follow orders good s01100101 01111000 01100101 01100011 01110101 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110110 00110110 00101100 01100011 01110100 00101101 00110101 00110011 00111000 00110001_

 

_ct-5381 arerr rre ct-are you readr ready yfor are youyou you ready f fooror you rerea dy f dyfor ordord-5381 ord rs_

 

–––––––––––––––

 

the light of this planet’s third moon creeps its way over the floorboards, and directly over fives’ closed eyes, and he blinks awake in annoyance. he rolls onto his side, grumbling a few incoherent curses and pulling his blanket up again. this wasn’t the first time this had happened, unfortunately - he’d usually just wait for the soft electric _hum_ of echo’s prosthetics and dogma’s faint snoring to send him back to sleep.

 

sure enough, as he settled back down, he could hear the faint whir of electricity, synced to echo’s breathing, and –– wait. he could _only_ hear echo’s breathing. rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as quickly as he could, he pushed himself up with one arm to look over echo, at dogma’s bed.

 

at dogma’s _empty_ bed.

 

‘ kriff. ‘ all hints of tiredness were gone from him, heart pounding behind his ribcage as his feet hit the floor, and his jaw was set as he headed for the door.

 

( things had been going _well_ for dogma lately; if fives found out that he had returned to some old habits, he was going to head back to kamino and wring nala se’s skinny neck. sure, they’d argue they weren’t the _direct_ cause of most of these problems, but _kark_ them. kark them for thinking decommission was the only fate for ‘flawed’ soldiers, and for encouraging the lie that they were built to survive any stress. how many shinies had fives seen shaking in their beds, because they never thought they would get nightmares? because they thought they were signs of a _deficient_ clone? )

 

( not to mention what that long-necked _demagolka_ had done to him and tup personally. one day, kamino would get its reckoning, and fives planned to be there for it. )

 

he breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that dogma’s bes’bev hadn’t moved from where it was last night, and the tip was clean. he frowned, walking into the kitchen and quickly checking around for where he and echo kept all the knives - all still in their places. that was good. maybe dogma just hadn’t been able to sleep again, and had done some - fives squinted at the chrono on their wall - very-early-morning fishing?

 

he shut his eyes and tried to breathe, lungs heaving in his chest in protest of the recent hurried movement and flush of adrenalin. that had to be it. he’d walk down the cliff face and dogma would be sitting there.

 

( doing _what?_ some traitorous part of his brain whispered - he’d _seen_ dogma’s fishing pole by his bes’bev, and the paints were on the kitchen table - fives had moved them in his search through the drawers. _shut the fuck up,_ he thought, at the paranoid part of his mind. _it’s the only lead i’ve_ got. ) he barely remembered to slide his boots on as he headed outside, rubbing his upper arms to ward off the chill. _kriff it, dogma - couldn’t you have picked a warmer time to do this?_ the _good_ thing about this planet’s four moons was that he didn’t have to bring along a light to make his way down the cliff; it was still light enough out that he could see distinct shapes, and muscle memory did the rest.

 

‘dogma? _dogma?_ i swear to fuck, dogma, this isn’t cool to pull. get your _shebs_ up here and back to bed, or i’m going to punt you off the cliff edge, so help me -‘ he stopped. he had rounded the corner into the opening of dogma’s cave, as he’d started thinking of it, but it was . . . empty. no sound but the rippling waves and the beating of his own heart. he swallowed back the fear that rose in his throat like bile, and sat down to catch his breath for a moment.

 

_dogma, if you’re dead, i’m going to kill you, i hope you know._

 

_––––––––––––––––––––_

 

 _‘_ what do you mean, he’s _gone?_ we’ve got nowhere to _go_ from here. ‘

 

‘ that’s not entirely true, ‘ fives said grimly, walking behind the house. ‘ there _is_ a town and a base a good few miles away from here, but we’re not supposed to go anywhere _near_ there. there’s nothing there for us. not anymore. ‘ echo eyed what fives was pulling out skeptically, arms crossed.

 

’ fives, that just . . . doesn’t look safe. ‘

 

fives patted the side of the rusty speeder that was kept behind the house. if he hadn’t _told_ echo it was a speeder, he would just have thought it was a pile of scrap metal collecting dust. even fives looked a bit nervous at the prospect, and he’d apparently run into an enemy airbase to steal their ships before. ‘ it’ll be fine. it just takes a couple of tries to get it started. we don’t know how long ago dogma left, and with your legs and my lung, neither of us could catch up to him walking. ‘ he looked just a _little_ bit like he was trying to convince himself as he started pushing buttons.

 

the speeder coughed to life with a puff of noxious smoke that immediately reminded echo of the time some battle droid had punctured a hole in wat tambor’s suit. the battle droid had been killed, and he’d been - well. he’d gotten the same gentle treatment he usually got at that fucker’s hands, but _more_ so, for laughing. still, it had been worth it to see that overgrown sack of bantha dung gagging in the air for a moment.

 

‘ aha! ‘ fives yelled triumphantly, drawing echo’s focus back to the present and turning to look at his _vod._ sure enough, the speeder was rumbling into action, floating, albeit with a slight tilt. it’d have to do, though. fives stuck two of his fingers in his mouth briefly, grimacing. ‘ burned my hand on the kriffing wires, but i got it working. ‘ he looked up at echo for a moment. ’ stay here? he might trail back around. and if . . . ‘ he trailed off, but echo knew what he meant anyway.

 

_if something happens to us, i don’t want it to be your neck on the line, again._

 

echo knew fives wouldn’t stop blaming himself for that, and now was really _not_ the time to argue the point. there would be time for that later. so he simply nodded, stepping forwards to tip his forehead against fives’ briefly. ‘ good luck, vod. ib'tuur jatne tuur _ash'ad_ kyr'amur. ‘ fives laughed at that, short and harsh, before swinging his leg over the speeder and pushing off towards the mountains that loomed dark against the wine-dark sky.

 

_––––––––––––––––––––_

 

_ct-5381. ct-5381. ct-5381. ct-5381. rrre reptor report to to the nneneares est ststation. awa awawait ord doer orders._

 

_good soldiers follow orders. good s ldirs f oo w orrs.g d s lr sf l w rdr s ——_

_01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110100 01111001 00101110_

 

_––––––––––––––––––––_

 

fives remembers his head droping involuntarily during their forced march, eyes glazing over as he forced himself to keep up the pace, sending one foot after the other. sure, they were trained for long-distance treks on kamino, but on kamino, they didn’t _just_ come out of a firefight, and the terrain wasn’t . . . like this, all dark and tangled and trying to eat you alive. ( succeeding, in a few people’s cases. poor raptor - that plant thing had gotten him before any of them could react. )

 

dogma had been ahead of him then, marching somewhere between rex and krell, and fives had seen his footprints following the large besalisk ones. he knows them well enough to spot them easily on the mountain trail - lighter than most troopers would be, and favoring his right leg ever since an explosion went off right next to his left. ( to his credit, he hadn’t even flinched; though he did flinch when kix cussed him out for it later, pulling shrapnel bits out of the places the armor didn’t quite protect. )

 

‘ _kriff it, dogma,_ ‘ he muttered, kicking the side of the speeder like it was a stubborn eopie, like that would suddenly make it smoothen out the journey and go faster. ‘ i’m going to fucking _kill you_ if you’re in trouble, i hope you know. ‘

 

of course, there was no reply, just the off-kilter rumbling of the speeder as he grimly turned it up a few gears, leaning forwards to steady himself as much as he could, and the occasional call of nighttime creatures to one another.

 

he crashed through the bush and down the mountainside with reckless abandon, shirking things like personal safety and speeder flying etiquette to head to where he had a crushing dread dogma might have headed. ( he refused to admit it to himself, though. mostly because it made no sense. _why now? he was doing well. i thought he was turning into something other than a sheb'urcyin idiot. if he goes and undoes all of that -_ )

 

he shook his head, shutting his eyes for the briefest of seconds and letting the adrenalin that came with the reckless speeder driving and the cold wind tearing at his skin rip away his thoughts, as well, eyes watering. as he crossed the crest of one of the bigger hills, he could see the dots of light on the horizon - somewhere, each of them meant a building or a home. fives nudged the nose of the speeder in that direction with his knees and hunched over the handlebars, getting as close to curling up as he dared.

 

 _kriff,_ but it was cold going this fast. why the hell didn’t he think to grab his gloves?

 

_––––––––––––––––––––_

 

dogma had no idea where he was. it was dark and his legs _ached,_ and he had no idea where he was or why he was there, or how he got there. ( he must have walked, obviously, but . . . when? how? ) and - he’s wearing a shiny’s armor, with a blaster strapped to his side. he . . . didn’t remember doing that, either, and his breath started to catch in his chest, dogma sinking to the ground and folding his hands behind his head to calm himself.

 

maybe this was just another nightmare. maybe he’d wake up soon. it would all go away.

 

and in a sense, it _did,_ a few moments later, when ct-5381 stood up and returned to the mission assigned to it. 

 

_––––––––––––––––––––_

_**binary translations:** _ _  
_

  _01100101 01111000 01100101 01100011 01110101 01110100 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110010 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100000 00110110 00110110 00101100 01100011 01110100 00101101 00110101 00110011 00111000 00110001 =_ excecute order 66, ct-5381

 _01101001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100100 01110101 01110100 01111001 00101110 =_ it is your duty

 

_**mando'a translations:** _

vod = brother  
vod'ika = little brother, or just an endearing version of 'vod'  
demagolka= someone who commits atrocities, war criminal  
shebs = ass  
ib'tuur jatne tuur  _ash'ad_  kyr'amur = today is a good day for  _someone else_ to die.   
sheb'urcyin = ass-kisser  
  



End file.
